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Western Maryland IT Center recognized

July 17th, 2019 by WCBC Radio

The Western Maryland IT Center of Excellence (IT Center) was recognized with the 2019 Innovation Award at the 27th annual conference of the Community Colleges of the Appalachian (CCA) in Asheville in June.

Autumn Becker, the IT Center’s director, accepted the award on behalf on the IT Center’s dedicated team of 23 IT industry and infrastructure partners. Dr. Cynthia Bambara, ACM president and CCA board member, was also in attendance.

The innovation award recognizes programs or activities in Community Colleges of the Appalachia member colleges that have been designed and successfully implemented to improve culture, efficiency, effectiveness or infrastructure.

The IT Center strives to instill a high level of interest in Information Technology business development in Western Maryland while educating a local workforce to meet the demands of IT business retention, expansion and attraction. Since 2014, the IT Center has trained over 300 incumbent (or currently employed) workers in a variety of industry-recognized training programs. It supports entry-level opportunities for jobseekers by funding and coordinating internships and workplace essential skills training.

The IT Center’s partners work together on a variety of initiatives to advance the regional IT sector, including: Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH); the Mountain Maryland Tech Network; the Tech at the Gap annual conference; the EXCELerate Pathway training program; and Girls Who Code.

The IT Center of Excellence is funded by the EARN Maryland program administered by the Maryland Department of Labor. Its most recent grant of $566,000, which began on January 1, 2019 and ends on December 31, 2020, will train an additional 300 individuals.

The IT Center is accepting registrations for TECH at the GAP: Elevating Intelligence ’19 on October 10. Topics range from artificial intelligence to ransomware. Keynote presenters include Amber Mac, a bestselling author and president of Ambermac Media, and Joe Mechlinski, a New York Times bestselling author and CEO and founder of SHIFT.

For more information about the Western Maryland IT Center of Excellence, contact Autumn Becker at 301-784-5434 or abecker@allegany.edu

One Response to “Western Maryland IT Center recognized”

  1. July 18, 2019 at 8:14 am, David said:

    Fantastic group of people and businesses working to better our area!!!

    Reply

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